


Duress, Coercion and Necessity

by desert_rose31



Category: Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Legal Drama, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Mother-Son Relationship, Post-Episode: s05e16 Felina, Prison Drama, The Trial of Jesse Pinkman, depictions of mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 01:43:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12002298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desert_rose31/pseuds/desert_rose31
Summary: After Walter White's death, Jesse's found in Reno and defended at trial by none other than Kim Wexler. Now in a penitentiary, Jesse must come to terms with himself, and the spectre of Walter White, while his mother struggles to be just that to him: a mother. Kim's now a partner with Hamlin, McGill and Wexler, but how, and why? And is she still tied to Jimmy?





	Duress, Coercion and Necessity

She stood in front of the foyer’s mirror in muted daylight. Her blond bob was stiff with hairspray, and she adjusted the pastel scarf engulfing her neck. She had dressed in shades of light blue and coordinated each piece, as she always did, from her cashmere sweater to the sensible flats, but it seemed superfluous today. Dressing for prison wasn’t in her wheelhouse, not that dressing for court for nearly two months had been either. A part of her wanted to have separate clothes for when she visited the penitentiary, as though the place were not worthy of her regular wardrobe, or the clothes themselves would be forever marred by their visit. Mrs. Pinkman huffed to herself and fluffed her hair. This is just a mother’s duty, this is no reflection on me, she thought.

A terribly sensible Ford sedan sat in her driveway, and she walked to it at brisk pace. It wasn’t a morning to invite polite conversations with any neighbours. She had held her head higher for the past few months mostly from the relief of him being found. What she detested, that which kept her eyes wide and stuck to the ceiling all night, was when he was lost, and the perpetual mill of rumours rotating that she could neither defend nor deflect. She could still feel the floor hitting her knees the day the DEA came to her door just days after _his_ body was found. A mean look crossed her face as she pushed the ignition button. Jesse had one good teacher when he was in high school, and he turned out to be the country’s answer to Pablo Escobar, she huffed to herself, exhaling rather deliberately, the noise filling the car like a faulty air valve. The drive to the prison would take forty-three minutes, and so she switched on her Sirius XM and flipped to the all-Elvis channel. If she were to stay calm on this drive, she was going to need help.

Her last visit had ended in untethered frustration. “If you’re not going to answer my questions, Jesse, I’m not going to keep making the drive out here to see you,” she had said. Not a peep popped out of his mouth, his blue eyes greyed and unyielding, and he just held the black phone receiver to his head, blinking. “Fine, Jesse, have it your way.” She klunked her receiver down hard enough to turn a few heads in what was otherwise a quiet, afternoon visiting session. There were just a couple men seeing daughters and wives that day, and nearly everyone was smiling and warm. Jesse looked down as she stood and backed away from their glass booth, and Mrs. Pinkman nodded, never surprised by an inch of his actions in her presence. The boy had been predictable in his idiocy since the age of ten, even if he upped the ante every moment he left the house. Was it really attention he had wanted, like the therapist said? He contended that since Jake’s birth and the discovery of his 149 I.Q., Jesse had acted out to try and acquire the care and respect they apparently lavished on the other son, but not him. She had a hard time believing it, and it wasn’t because she didn’t lavish Jake – she knew she did. It was because she was the one to drive Jesse out of state every summer for that BMX camp; she was the one to enroll, and pay for, multiple art camps each summer, and classes during the school years. She was the one gave him what he wanted, not Adam, not Saint Ginny, it had been her. Going to Europe in two-thousand hadn’t just been about getting Jake early exposure. The Louvre, the Musée D’Orsay, all that crap, she laughed to herself, that was for Jesse too, but did he appreciate it? She had caught him writing out how to ask for marijuana in French just before they were heading for a walk along the Seine. It had infuriated her, but Adam had merely laughed. He remained ambivalent for too long, she had decided retrospectively. She thought, if he had been with me on this from the beginning, maybe he never would have fallen like this. She shook her head, flipping her turning signal on with a finger.

Adam’s strategy during the trial was ricocheting from head fully encased in the sand to hyper-vigilant. One week he would attend every day with her, the next he’d be heading to Georgia with Marty for some four-day golf trip in the backwoods. She’d been so angry the third time it happened she told him she only hoped it ended like _Deliverance_ , but worse, and he’d told her rather resolutely to fuck off. Jesse never liked how controlling Adam was, and how his father thought he could speak to her sometimes when he knew neither he nor Jake were listening, and a part of her always admired him for defending her, even in his insolence, and even if she had to slap him eventually just to put an end to the conflict. The last payment to the lawyer’s firm was due today and Adam had agreed to drop off the check, but not without an argument. For the hundredth time, he bemoaned touching his precious GILT bonds to fund Jesse’s defense by Hamlin, McGill and Wexler. “You should have let him rot with a public defender,” he said again.

“Our Jesse is not a murderer,” she yelled back, face scrunching and then unravelling in the silence. “He’s not a mother, he doesn’t get it,” she muttered as she turned into the corrections complex. It was medium security center, which was a welcome change from the administration facility he was stuck in during the trial; that place had her convinced her son was some sort of Hannibal Lecter. Just over half an hour of security screening and probing passed, and she was escorted to a Plexiglas cubicle to await the arrival of her son, the convicted criminal. Five minutes later she could hear the unmistakable jangling of metal chains, and then see the piercing orange fill the space opposite her. There he was: hair scruffy, face stubbly and eyes like stone. He lowered himself slowly to the chair while avoiding excessive eye contact, and then picked up the phone receiver on his side of the barrier as best he could with his two hands cuffed together.

“Hi Jesse,” she said, voice cracking ever so slightly at the end. He nodded in response, his eyes blinking deeply together like they’d been trained to hold back geysers of tears.

“How’s your day goin’ today?” Her signature tone of forced brightness dripped off of every word. Jesse glared like he was shocked at the question, but then darted his face away to look up to the ceiling, and then just comfortably in any direction but hers.

“Okay, just hanging out. They don’t have me making license plates yet.” The curl of a smile made his lips quiver.

“Oh, is that what they are assigning you to here?”

“Nah, it was a joke.”

“Oh,” she looked down and repositioned herself in the black plastic chair. “Your father paid the lawyers’ off today, isn’t that good to know it’s done?”

Jesse made eye contact for a split second before lowering his head. He mumbled a yes into the receiver, and continued making a show of looking away from her.

“I’m still working on getting him to visit.”

“Don’t bother,” he said, now catching her eyes. His brow knotted over like it always did when he was frustrated, or angry. She watched as the wheel of emotions spun inside of him. “He thinks I’m scum, and he’s right.”

“Jesse don’t say that.” Her voice was terse and unforgiving. “He just doesn’t understand. He still won’t read the court transcript.”

“The transcript?” He rubbed the heel of a hand against his right eye socket. “You agreed to drop that shit.”

“Watch your mouth,” she barked.

“Sorry.”

“Did that girl’s grandmother respond to you yet?” Mrs. Pinkman asked it like it was a nuisance task she needed to check off a list.

“Not yet, I don’t know if she speaks any English. She might need to get someone to translate it, or…maybe she just threw it away when she realized where it came from.” 

“It was the right thing to do, Jesse. For you, for us…for your soul.”

Jesse said nothing as he palmed his forehead. She could see how deep the lines were getting, how fast he was aging in this place, and it tugged at her heart. Twelve years with parole after three was the best the DEA could do despite everything Jesse gave them.

“They want to put Jake ahead to grade ten, but I refused. He’s been through enough.” 

“Does he like the new school? Lame-ass uniforms, right?”

“They’re smart looking. He’s got a blazer with a crest with two birds on it, I like it.”

Jesse just stared past her and blinked. “What, did I say something wrong?” He blinked again, and she could see him bury something horrid inside himself as though he were repressing a ghost.

“Don’t let him come here.”

“That’s a decision he can make for himself when he’s sixteen, Jesse. The therapist said he needs to be in control of his emotional journey with everything that has happened.” Jesse nodded, but she could tell there was resentment boiling up inside of him. No conversation about Jake could ever pass without it. “You want to tell me about your counselling?” she asked.

“Nah, I mean…it’s fine.” She could see him wriggling in discomfort, and he was obsessively rubbing his eyes again.

“Don’t rub your eyes.” He never believed her that he was doing more damage than good. “The therapist said it would be good for you to say one thing that is difficult for you to say out loud, then say one easy thing. Both things, you know, I don’t know about. 

“I’m not…up for this.”

“You want me to leave, like last time? We have time left, let’s not waste it.”

“Fine,” he conceded. He groaned in that typical, obnoxious way he’d been doing since he was fourteen, and she held back a smile. She watched as he summoned the courage to speak, he was twisting and turning in his seat like whatever admission was coming was being plucked from some hellfire within him. And then, he started to speak.

“I was cooking meth in Aunt Ginny’s house…” 

“Jesse, I knew that, remember? Try again.” He winced at her words.

“I was cooking meth in the RV I used to have.”

“I know, with Mr. White too.”

“Yeah, I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can. Come on.” She was trying her hardest not to go easy on him. It was against all of her instincts not to tell him everything will be fine. He groaned again, and then looked at her plaintively.

“Why don’t I start you off? The grandmother’s girl, Andrea, was she sweet? Did you love her?”

Jesse stared back at her from the corners of his eyes, blinking as the geysers popped. Tears dropped, and dropped, and he shook his head. “No, I didn’t,” he sniffed, and awkwardly tried to wipe his nose on his sleeve without dropping the receiver. 

“I don’t understand, was there someone else? Is that why you feel so guilty?”

He straightened in his seat and leaned toward the glass. “She’s dead because of me.”

“No, Jesse. You were kidnapped and tortured, nothing that happened was your fault.” The words were starting to sound clinical, she had spoken them so many times. The woman from the DEA who called her when he was found in Reno, Annette or Bernadette, she couldn’t remember her name any more, she had told her that he was only caught because he was brought to the hospital on a psychiatric call, something she called a fifty-one fifty. He was threatening and incoherent at a Walgreens, and it was only upon a full medical examination after hospital admission that his body was found to be raging with infection from an onslaught of injuries, injuries that were the clear evidence of brutal and sustained torture. The fever from infection had driven him mad, and the DEA had been called once the attending physician put two and two together. She stood for the longest time clutching the phone’s receiver after the call ended as her mind summoned grotesque images, and Adam had rushed over after passing the room and hearing her muttering something about her baby being found. But, the trial had changed her. She consumed every article, every video, every news piece she could find, and she missed not a single day in court. She was cold and resolved, like a rock, because she knew her son better than anyone. Better than the press and their portrayal of the mad, bipolar drug addled cartel-man, better than the DEA’s misguided pass at making him Heisenberg’s attack dog, and certainly better than that wretched Mr. White. Jesse was consumed by regret and remorse for the length of the proceedings, and that was exactly what she and that pit-bull of a lawyer Kim Wexler wanted. Mrs. Pinkman would be the rock, but Jesse, he was the puddle. Kim trotted out every soppy morsel she could glean from Jesse to evoke sympathy from the jury. Mrs. Pinkman could still see her stalking about the courtroom with her perfect swirl of a ponytail bouncing on impact during her opening statements. 

_“It is my job in this trial to prove to you, members of the jury, that my client played no role in the brutal murders of two DEA agents in the desert, nor did he play any active or passive role in the deaths of several members of the white supremacist group, The Aryan Brotherhood, at a compound located west of Albuquerque. It’s also my duty to prove to you the extent to which my client was involved in the manufacture and sale of N-methylamphetamine, the street drug known as methamphetamine. It may be a tall order, but I have no doubt that you will come to know my client for the person he is, and understand how he found himself in circumstances that would lead to his presence, albeit with no involvement, at the execution of these murders by Mr. Walter White, also known as Heisenberg._

_Jesse Pinkman is an Albuquerque local, raised in the upstanding Country Club neighbourhood of town, who was coerced into drug manufacture and drug trafficking. Cook meth with me, or you’re going to jail, is what Walter White said to my client in order to blackmail him into entering the drug trade with him. Could Jesse have gone to the authorities? Perhaps, but would he have been believed as a drug user with a rap sheet of misdemeanors? More than likely, he wouldn’t be believed over a well-respected local chemistry teacher with ties to the DEA. This precise power imbalance is what Walter White relied on to exploit Jesse Pinkman. In fact, over the span of two years, my client was subjected to a diabolical strategy of manipulation, coercion, and abuse from this man, a man he respected and trusted. Each interaction between these two was bathed in putdowns and insults, language designed to make Mr. Pinkman feel worthless - worthless to anyone but Mr. White himself. He made a point of telling Jesse that the only thing he was good at, the only thing that gave him value as a person, was cooking methamphetamine. After my client was brutally assaulted by the late DEA Agent Hank Schraeder, Mr. White visited him repeatedly in the hospital to convince him to return to cooking meth, and to drop all charges against the DEA. He did this by playing the father to him during his time of need; he cared for him, complemented him, and then offered him a bigger slice of his empire in exchange for a return to drug manufacturing, and dropping all charges against the DEA. And Jesse did just what was asked of him – he was that lost and alone. Yes, Jesse was assaulted by the late Agent Shraeder, but my client has no record of assault on file. He is a non-violent person. He’s a caring, and emotional, person as you’ll see in this trial._ _At other times during this two-year period, Mr. White would tell Jesse he had nothing in his life but the manufacture of methamphetamine: no hobbies, no job, no family, no girlfriend. Whenever Jesse became close to someone, Mr. White found a way to sever the connection permanently. In the case of Andrea Cantillo, he poisoned her son so that Jesse would suspect, and subsequently lose loyalty to, Gustavo Fring, a cartel member Mr. White forced him to work with, and then murdered with the help of Hector Salamanca, another known cartel member. Once Walter White resumed his meth-making operations with Jesse by his side, he coerced Jesse into leaving his relationship with Andrea Cantillo._ _His pattern with Jesse was to isolate and dominate, and when he exhausted every avenue of manipulation, he turned to murder. Walter White ordered the murder of my client in early 2010, and thus began a chain of events that led to the deaths of Agent Shraeder and Agent Gomez, to the kidnapping, and enslavement, of Jesse by the Aryan Brotherhood, and ultimately to Walter White’s slaughter of these men before his accidental death._

_Yes, the men Walter White paid to killed Jesse didn’t kill him. Instead, they held him captive for months, they burned him with cigarettes every day, they punched, kicked, and sliced him every day, they raped him every day. Jesse Pinkman is not a cold-blooded killer, he is a victim. The deaths of DEA Agent Hank Schraeder and DEA Agent Steven Gomez were tragic, but their murders were not carried out at the hands of my client, neither directly nor indirectly. He was merely a bystander, strung along in a criminal conspiracy, through coercion and manipulation, much larger than he could ever have imagined. He played no role in the deaths of Jack Welker, Todd Alquist, Kenneth Jones, Lester Groggins, Matthew Smith, Franklin Edgar, James Givens nor Martin Teller, who were savagely killed by an M60 device planted in Cadillac. My client was enslaved and captive, he couldn’t have outfitted a car and engineered its deployment. This is classic Walter White.”_

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Jesse said.

“Okay Jesse, but you need to tell me one thing about something that happened to you in that place. It’s important.” She hoped he was really hearing her, believing her. He groaned again.

“Why do you want to hear this stuff?”

“Because Jesse, you’re my son. I brought you into this world.” Her voice halted, and choked. She swallowed hard to continue. “I need to know what they did to you.”

He sighed and exhaled, the air draining out lazily. “Alright, uh – that weirdo Todd, he gave me ice cream sometimes.”

“Ice cream?” It was an odd admission to her.

“Yeah, like he’d come by the hole in the ground thing, and shimmy it down to me. It’d always be half melted. And it hurt my stomach, but my stomach hurt the entire time.” 

Her face scrunched and her eyes welled a bit. This is why she was here, she told herself, to take some of the burden from him, piece by piece. “How’s your stomach now?” 

“Shitty.”

“Language, Jesse.”

“Mom, we’re in a prison – like, come on.”

“Manners and class are free, learn some.” Jesse rolled his eyes. “No one’s laid a hand on you in there, have they?”

“Nah, I should be cool in here.”

“Oh?”

“Kim’s got it all figured out." 

“Kim has?” 

“Yeah, she’s awesome.”

**Author's Note:**

> I started this as a Jesse & his mom thing, and damn if Kim didn't just find her way in there and stomp around claiming territory. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this so far. There is more to come. 
> 
> Ps. I'm super *in love* with the idea of Kim defending Jesse like the badass she is, and want BCS to end with this (somehow) and the mystery of Cinnabone Gene.


End file.
